Welcome to the KBH Energy Center

The Kay Bailey Hutchison Center for Energy, Law, and Business is an innovative interdisciplinary joint venture of the School of Law and the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. The mission of the KBH Energy Center is to provide the finest educational opportunities in the United States to students who wish to pursue careers in energy and to serve as a nexus for incisive, unbiased, and relavant research and analyses for policy makers, with a special emphasis on Latin America.
Please download our brochure (PDF).

From the KBH Energy Center Blog

The Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) – the agency responsible for overseeing energy development on federal lands – issued its long-awaited rules for oil and gas operations using hydraulic fracturing (fracking) last week. The rules, which will take effect in June, apply to fracking operations on roughly 750 million acres of… Full Story

As the drought enters its fifth straight year, policy makers across Texas are looking at new ways to encourage water conservation by industrial and other users. Just last month, at a joint hearing of the House Natural Resources and Energy Resources committees, state legislators emphasized the need to reduce water use in oil and gas… Full Story

Recently, parts of northern and central Texas have experienced above-normal precipitation, bringing much needed relief from the drought. This has not, however, been enough to make up for past deficits, with many locations receiving just 70 to 80 percent of normal precipitation since late 2010. Thus, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, over 61… Full Story

Last month, Senate Republicans joined their Democratic counterparts in approving legislation acknowledging that “climate change is real and not a hoax.” Senators could not, however, agree on its cause, with two measures attributing climate change to human activity failing to pass. In stark contrast, across the Atlantic, political leaders in the United Kingdom (U.K.) have… Full Story

The lesser prairie chicken – a mid-sized, brown and white striped bird inhabiting the southern Great Plains – has become a symbol of the growing tension between energy development and species conservation. Recent increases in oil and gas drilling, wind energy production, and other human activities impacting the lesser prairie chickens’ habitat has led to… Full Story